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Gambling in Pennsylvania usually entails risk only for the customer. He puts up money; the casinos, the lottery and the state government take it. But the rollout of the most recent gambling expansion authorized by the Legislature and the Corbett demonstration indicates that, for the government, gambling might be a risk, after all.

Not content with casinos that produce the second most gambling revenue in the land, after Nevada, state lawmakers and Gov. Tom Corbett decided last year to expand gambling into any of the state's 4,000-plus bars that wish to have it.

Authorized "small games of chance" were expected by the politicians to produce large sums of money. In his budget proposal for the next fiscal year, Corbett anticipates $100 million in new state revenue from the enterprise. Lawmakers who approved the gambling expansion predicted it eventually would generate $156 million a year in state revenue.

The administration estimated that 2,000 bars would apply for licenses in the first year. But a month into the application period, a grand total of six bar owners have applied for licenses.

In the rush for revenue, it seems, lawmakers failed to consider some important technical matters. For example, there are vastly different requirements for a bar owner to obtain a gambling license than for a liquor license. And given that a rules violation on the gambling side could result in penalties on the liquor enforcement side, including potential losses of liquor licenses, many bar owners apparently have decided that the joys of gambling aren't worth the trouble.

"This rollout is worse than Obamacare," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Jake Corman, R-Centre, said at a hearing last week. "More people signed up for Obamacare than we're signing up for this small games of chance, from an industry who begged for this."

It's possible that in a state where many low-income people have easier access to a casino than to health care, gambling has reached its saturation point.

But expect the croupiers in the state Capitol to try to develop new markets - more young people through Internet gambling and, if they can figure out how to circumvent a federal prohibition - sports gambling. Like addicted gamblers themselves, state lawmakers have come to believe that the only way to cover a loss is to double down.

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